OBJECTIVE Women with Lynch syndrome have an increased risk of developing colorectal and gynecologic malignancies such as endometrial cancer. Complex hyperplasia has about a 30% risk of developing into endometrial cancer. The aim of this study was to determine the genetic risk for developing endometrial cancer by immunohistochemical staining of premalignant lesions for mutL homolog 1, mutS homol...

MutL homologs belong to a family of proteins that share a conserved ATP binding site. We demonstrate that amino-terminal domains of the yeast MutL homologs Mlh1 and Pms1 required for DNA mismatch repair both possess independent, intrinsic ATPase activities. Amino acid substitutions in the conserved ATP binding sites concomitantly reduce ATP binding, ATP hydrolysis, and DNA mismatch repair in vi...

We determined the localizations of mismatch repair proteins in living Bacillus subtilis cells. MutS-GFP colocalized with the chromosome in all cells and formed foci in a subset of cells. MutL-GFP formed foci in a subset of cells, and its localization was MutS dependent. The introduction of mismatches by growth in 2-aminopurine caused a replication-dependent increase in the number of cells with ...

Half of hereditary nonpolyposis colon cancer kindreds harbor mutations that inactivate MutLa (MLH1 PMS2 heterodimer). MutLa is required for mismatch repair, but its function in this process is unclear. We show that human MutLa is a latent endonuclease that is activated in a mismatch-, MutSa-, RFC-, PCNA-, and ATP-dependent manner. Incision of a nicked mismatch-containing DNA heteroduplex by thi...

Pig is an important economical animal as its muscle serves as food in the everyday meat supply. Pork quality and quantity must associate with several genes, especially those expressed in the early stage of muscle development. In this study, we selected three novel genes in a porcine fetus skeletal muscle cDNA library and mapped them all to porcine chromosome 13 using IMpRH panels (Yerle et al.,...

UvrD is a superfamily I DNA helicase with well documented roles in excision repair and methyl-directed mismatch repair (MMR) in addition to poorly understood roles in replication and recombination. The MutL protein is a homodimeric DNA-stimulated ATPase that plays a central role in MMR in Escherichia coli. This protein has been characterized as the master regulator of mismatch repair since it i...